Did Outlander Just Get One Step Closer to Launching a Spin-Off?

Die-hard fans of Diana Gabaldon’sOutlander books will have noticed the sly introduction of a younger version of the popular character Lord John Grey last season. The teenage Grey—going by his true first name William—encountered Claire and Jamie Fraser on the eve of battle in Season 2—but he’ll be back in a much more mature form for Season 3. The Starz series has cast Australian actor David Berry to play the adult Lord John Grey, a character so popular, Gabaldon eventually spun him off into his own novels. Will the TV version get the same treatment?

Berry is best known for his work in the period Australian drama A Place to Call Home. Deadline rather coyly describes Grey as “boyishly handsome with an upper class rearing — the consummate gentleman,” adding that “a scandal from his past has relegated Lord John to an undesirable position as governor of a desolate prison in Northern Scotland.” More on that scandal later—but suffice it to say that one of Grey’s prisoners will be none other than Jamie Fraser.

Last year, on the subject of a John Grey spin-off, Outlander show-runner Ronald D. Moore has said vaguely (but promisingly!), “It’s in the back of our minds as a potential thing. But right now our minds are pretty firmly set on just delivering the second season. We’ll see what happens down the line on Lord Grey.” Starz, surely, would relish the opportunity to have another series that highly engaged Outlander fans can tune into. (HBO certainly wishes it could spin off Game of Thrones.)

Diana Gabaldon has explained that while Grey is “important” to the Outlander series, he “isn’t onstage all the time.” She sees him as the perfect character to go “off leading his life and having adventures elsewhere. I could write about any of those adventures without causing complications for future novels. Beyond that obvious advantage, Lord John is a fascinating character. He’s what I call a ‘mushroom’—one of those unplanned people who pops up out of nowhere and walks off with any scene he’s in — and he talks to me easily (and wittily).”

There’s one more reason Lord John Grey might make for a fascinating spin-off character, but here’s where we raise the spoiler warning for those who haven’t read the books.

Grey, as viewers will soon find out, is gay in, as Gabaldon puts it, “a time when to be homosexual was a capital offense, and Lord John has more than most to lose by discovery. He belongs to a noble family, he’s an officer in His Majesty’s Army, and loves both his family and his regiment; to have his private life discovered would damage—if not destroy—both. Consequently, he lives constantly with conflict, which makes him both deeply entertaining and easy to write about.”

Outlander has dabbled a bit, controversially, with homosexuality (or, rather, homosexual assault) in the form of Jack Randall’s traumatizing assault on Jamie in Season 1. It will do the show good to have a gay character like Lord John Grey, who is not tainted by sexual violence. Sure, Grey’s unrequited crush on Jamie has a slight potential to reinforce problematic stereotypes, but Outlander has such a solid track record of treating sex with great maturity that there’s every reason to have high hopes for Grey. Let’s see how Berry does with the role in Season 3, and then we can start plotting a Lord John Grey spin-off.